Now, Pakistan Claims its Contribution to Higgs Boson

A graphic showing traces of collision of particles at the Compact Muon Solenoid experience.

The discovery of the long-elusive Higgs boson particle Wednesday might bring clarity on the existence of the objects in the universe. But the sub atomic particle itself must be wondering where it came from. Who discovered it?

Peter Higgs, Satyendra Nath Bose or Abdus Salam? You might be aware of the first two, but the new entry in the list comes from none other than India’s neighbor Pakistan, which has claimed their scientist contributed to the landmark discovery.

An article that appeared in Pakistan’s Express Tribune Friday said the country’s sole Nobel laureate, Mr. Salam, was the one who did “some of the earliest theoretical groundwork that led to this discovery.”

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It said that the earliest work on the “standard model” – one of the most successful theories in physics, which describes how matter is built and how particles interact – was conducted by Mr. Salam.

“Of the many discoveries that later solidified the Standard Model of physics was work done in 1967 by Dr. Abdus Salam and American physicist Steven Weinberg in unifying the Higgs mechanism to Glashow’s theory, giving the ‘electroweak theory’ its current form,” the paper said.

The article noted that Mr. Salam collaborated with another Indian physicist, Jogesh Pati, in 1974 to propose what is known as the ‘Pati-Salam’ model that further moved forward the “theoretical underpinnings of the Standard Model.”

This might give the Indian government some more reasons to cheer. It has been complaining that the role of another Indian scientist, Mr. Bose, has not been given due credit. India had issued a lengthy statement saying that the God particle was “as much Boson as Higgs.”

And much like the Indian government and the media, which had been annoyed over the lack of credit given to Mr. Bose in the Higgs boson drama, the Pakistani newspaper, too, shares a disappointment.

“A Pakistani was at the fore of this frontier of discovery in the 1960s and 1970s. But rather than encourage and celebrate his magnificent achievement, he was maligned and sidelined for his faith. An ironic fact: most physicists are staunch atheists but Salam was one of the few firm believers in God.”

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